Edward Douglas was a passenger on the the German
passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed.
Edward H. Douglas was born on October 28, 1898 in Newark, NJ. He had
been a US Navy petty officer during World War I, and after the war he
returned to Europe and went into advertising, first with General Motors,
and then later with the H. K. McCann Company, a European division of
McCann/Erickson, through which he continued to work with General Motors.
He spent several years in Paris, and then in the early 1930s was
transferred to Frankfurt, where he developed a wide range of
international contacts. By 1937 he was McCann's Director of European
Operations.
According to author A. A. Hoehling (and due to a
number of dubious efforts to invent drama and intrigue in his 1962 book,
"Who Destroyed The Hindenburg?" his claims about Douglas should not be
taken at face value and are included here merely for the sake of
completion), Edward Douglas was divorced while in Frankfurt, and his
wife Martha and daughter Dorothy moved to Switzerland. About this time,
the story goes, Douglas hired a young Jewish secretary. This did not go
unnoticed by the local authorities, as Douglas’ office at 56 Neue
Mainzer Strasse was in the same building as the Frankfurt branch office
of Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda. Douglas was allegedly asked by the
authorities to fire his secretary, and when he refused the Gestapo and
the S.D. began following the two of them around Frankfurt, tapped his
phones, and on at least one occasion broke into his office at night and
went through his files. He then transferred to the company's London
office, perhaps having had enough of the Gestapo.
Regardless of
whether or not any of the story told by Hoehling is true, the fact is
that as of the first week of May, 1937, Edward Douglas was traveling to
America to spend some time visiting family, since he hadn't been home
since 1930. He had informed his mother in California (where she lived in
Altadena with two of her sons: George, retired advertising manager
formerly with General Motors Corporation in Japan; and Paul, a student
at Pasadena Junior college) of his plans to fly on the Hindenburg, as
well as his younger brother Halsey, a member of the editorial staff of
the Newark Evening News who lived in Belleville, NJ. On May 6th, Halsey
Douglas was at his home uneasily eyeing the afternoon thunderstorms and,
once again according to Hoehling, even having an instinctive feeling
that he’d not see his brother alive again.
As for the events of
the last flight of the Hindenburg, little is actually known about
Douglas’ experiences on the trip. One thing is certain, however: whereas
several books (and even the 1975 movie with George C. Scott) have
Douglas receiving a mysterious coded telegram onboard the ship, this
simply did not happen. Author Michael M. Mooney, in writing his 1972
book "The Hindenburg," (succumbing, to an even greater extent than
Hoehling, to a need to invent drama for his book) concocted that story
from events that allegedly took place involving Mooney’s father, James
D. Mooney. James Mooney had been President of Overseas Operations for
General Motors during the 1930s and was allegedly (according to his son)
the GM executive to whom Edward Douglas reported in Frankfurt.
Apparently, James Mooney received a telegram much like the one
eventually attributed to Douglas, and years later his son Michael simply
added it to his fictionalized account of Douglas' last days, admitting
as much in the acknowledgement section of his book.
What is known for certain is that Edward
Douglas was in the passenger area on the Hindenburg as it came in to
land at Lakehurst, NJ on the evening of May 6th, 1937, and was probably
in the starboard lounge when the fire broke out. He never made it out of
the ship, and his brother Halsey, who had been at the air station to
greet him, identified his body either later that night or early the next
day. Halsey Douglas told reporters afterward that he suspected that
Edward might have been suffocated to death before he was burned, saying
that when he saw the body, "Ed's hand was still held up in front of his
face as though to keep the fumes away."
After Edward Douglas'
death, his wife Martha and daughter Dorothy moved back to the United
States. Many years later, after retiring, Dorothy Douglas moved to
Menomonie, WI to look after her uncle Halsey, who had retired there some
years before. Halsey Douglas passed away on September 27th, 1999 at the
age of 91. Dorothy Douglas passed away a couple of years later, on June
26th, 2001 at the age of 76.
Notes:
1. The
Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German
passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during
its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station
Lakehurst, which is located adjacent to the borough of Lakehurst, New
Jersey, United States. Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61
crewmen), there were 35 fatalities (13 passengers and 22 crewmen). One
worker on the ground was also killed, making a total of 36 dead.
2. The author, Patrick Russell, writes I must stress again that much of what has previously
been written about Edward Douglas over the years, the bulk of which
comes from the books of A. A. Hoehling and Michael Mooney, is either
absolutely false (in the case of the infamous in-flight telegram) or
else is highly suspect in light of the source material (namely, the bit
of intrigue involving Douglas' Jewish secretary and the Gestapo in
Frankfurt) and is as yet unconfirmed by a second, reputable source.
The biggest problem with Hoehling's book is that, while it was the
original source of a libelous accusation of sabotage leveled at a
Hindenburg crew member and much of the book is wasted on useless
narrative tangents intended to create an air of mystery, research using
alternate sources (official eyewitness testimony, newspaper articles,
later interviews with survivors) indicates that the straight reportage
that Hoehling did for his book did tend to be more or less accurate. The
information about Edward Douglas that Hoehling included in his book
falls therefore, in my opinion, into an uncomfortable grey area. It
could conceivably be true, as is the case with much of the non-sabotage
oriented material in Hoehling's book. However, I also know that the
source of much of Hoehling's information on Edward Douglas also seems to
have been the same person who helped him to concoct his baseless
sabotage theory. Hence, my quandary over the matter.
For this
reason, as I briefly mention in the article, I have included the
questionable material about Douglas' experiences with the Gestapo in
Frankfurt with the parenthetical warning about the dubious nature of the
source. It is my hope that I will eventually find a source to either
confirm or debunk the information in question. For now, I reluctantly
let it stand, with the caveat "Could have happened, but probably not."
3. Carol Henderson said...
Edward
Douglas is my uncle. I am the youngest daughter of Paul Douglas,
Edward's youngest brother. I have often wondered about The Hindenburg
accident and my uncle Edward--whom my father adored and looked up to. My
grandmother and grandfather separated when my father was three years
old. From then on my father looked to Edward as a father figure. And now
that my father is quite old--he'll be 92 later in February 2010--he
often weeps about losing his brother so long ago and about how different
his own path would have been had Edward lived.
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